My Commercial Pilot Licence is complete. Through night studying, weekend and after work flying, hard work paid off. As a fully rated CPL(A), ME/IR pilot my professional career gets an additional perspective. Fasten your seat-belts ladies and gentlemen, we’re taking off and it ‘s going to be exciting!

Chairing a session in Flight Test Education and Training in AIAA Aviation 2018 participating USAF TPS, Florida Institute of Technology and NASA. An amazing week in Atlanta GA, full of aerospace technology and meets. Some time was spent in the F-35 simulator displayed by Lockheed Martin in the expo area, witnessing some of the outstanding features of the FCS. Atlanta rocks!

A very successful 50th European SETP Symposium took place in Turin Italy. Excellent compilation of papers, distinguished attendees from both Europe and US, meeting of new flight test professionals and old friends, high quality technical tours and an amazing Gala dinner. My presentation dealt with the F-35 CLAWs and the testing approach in modern fighter aircraft.

Looking forward to the next one!

With James Brown (F-22A and F-117A Chief Test Pilot) and Tom Morgenfeld (X-35 first flight and CTP)

Do you believe in “magic numbers”? Are magic and arithmetics two completely different and by definition uncombined concepts or maybe not? Either ways, there are numbers that in certain disciplines are encountered more often than others. So what would be the “magic number” of flight test?

I finally think I have an answer to that question, and that number is seven (7)! It is the number that answers all of the following questions:

How many test points are required for PEC certification of a single configuration?

How many speed points are required to define a level performance curve?

How many stalls should be performed per configuration to determine stall speed?

How many TO/LD per config are required to define TO/LD distances?

What is the theoretically ideal number of pilots for HQ tasks?

How many speeds points are required for the determination of a climb performance curve?

How many different altitude level accels are required for the generation of a SEP plot (Altitude vs. M)?

What is the average number of test points per test flight? (Ref. Lockheed Martin 2013)

This common encounter of number 7 in flight test, is not something unexpected. 7 can be described as the the minimum/convenient number that can adequately capture nonlinearities across a region, as well as indicate deviations from a normal distribution in statistics, and that is what flight test is looking for!

Bottom line: If you are asked to recommend a number in flight test and you are unsure, just say “seven” … it usually works :-)

Disclaimer: This post includes a mix of technical accuracy, approximation and humor. It is not intended as technical advice as each test is unique and should be treated as such.

Great experience and adventure flying over the Northern parts of Ontario in a single day X-country trip for CPL requirements (>300nm + return). More than 10hrs solo flt time of which 7 under an IFR flight plan and 2 under Night VFR. A good story to tell including COMM failures, expedited approaches, airplane changes, re-fueling challenges and more.